Thursday, January 10, 2008

Three Resources Worth Checking Out

* Real-Time Trading Room - I had a nice conversation yesterday with Bill Duryea of the Institute of Auction Market Theory and Trevor Harnett of Market Delta. Bill offers a real-time trading room that bases trading decisions on the use of Market Profile and Market Delta. This page gives an idea of the kind of research that goes into the trade decisions. My sense is that Bill's approach to trading is surprisingly similar to my own (calculating odds of hitting various price points during the day and developing trade ideas from those based on ongoing supply/demand) and that his service is refreshingly free of hype and false promises. He offers a free five-day trial to the trading room.

* Quantifiable Edges - Another great conversation yesterday was with Rob Hanna, hedge fund manager and trader who is now offering his blog dealing with tested edges in the market. He has some excellent and practical trading ideas on the blog. For example, we saw a reversal in yesterday's stock market. Rob outlines what we might expect following such a reversal going forward. I'm encouraging him to consider offering a newsletter for traders that could provide some of the same edges that a hedge fund manager would employ in his own trading.

* The Value of Preparation - Ray Barros offers a series of articles on his blog dealing with routines and habits associated with good trading. These include business planning, planning for disasters, and money management planning. Great material on his blog site. I'll post on the preparation topic shortly; it's an important one.

* Cautionary Note - Apropos of my recent Twitter post, we got to a very oversold point, with new 20-day lows exceeding 3000 across the NYSE, NASDAQ, and ASE. I don't trust the commonly quoted 52-week new high/low stats for the NYSE, however. If you look at the figures, we made 709 new lows on Wednesday, fewer than the over 1100 new lows registered in August. But if we limit our look to common stocks only traded on the NYSE, we see that we made 545 new annual lows on Wednesday, much higher than the 300 seen in August. Across every major index--S&P 500 large caps; S&P 400 mid caps; S&P 600 small caps--new 52-week lows have expanded relative to August. Until we see a pattern of price lows with fewer stocks making new lows, I'm not jumping into this market for the long haul.